184_projects:power_everything_24 [Projects & Practices in Physics]

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===== Project: Power Is Everything =====

==== Kick Off Questions ====
  - What physics principle is the loop rule based? What physics principle is the node rule based on?
  - If resistors are combined in series does that increase or decrease the total resistance? What about parallel resistors?
  - What can you say about current and voltage for resistors in series? What about in parallel?


==== Main Problem ====

The FTOE engineers are ready to turn the hawkion accelerator back on, but they are worried about overloading the power supply to the accelerator -- since FTOE is a secret research facility, it was designed not to draw too much power from the electrical grid, and many of its systems run on battery power.

To successfully power up the accelerator, they must turn on the main control system (CS), the primary particle source (PP), the electromagnetic calorimeter system (ECS), the current regulator (CR), and the charge containment module (CCM), as well as the facility lighting (FL), using only the main battery (230 V).

The engineers have been working in a simulator to figure out how to turn on each of the systems in various orders, but keep running into problems. If the total current from the main battery exceeds 0.35 A, the battery will die -- and with Lakeview still isolated, they can't replace it.  

The engineers have sent over the most recent steps they tried and the data they collected for each step. 

  - Turn on only the CR, which seems to work properly and only draws 0.242 A from the battery.
  - Then turn on the PP, which decreases the current from the battery. The CR seems to barely be functioning so you conclude that it is running at it's minimum power of 18.35 W.
  - Next they turned everything off, and switched on only the PP and the FL. Immediately the warning light goes off in the simulator because the current from the battery is way too high at 1.48 A and the facility lighting has burnt out because the power in the bulb was 264.6 W (exceeding their maximum power rating of 120 W).
  - You decide to start over and turn everything off again. You turn on the CS, ECS, and CCM - which seems to be perfectly alright. The current from the battery is maintaining at a nice and safe 0.188 A. Since this combination works well, you grab the hand-dandy multimeter and find that the CS, ECS, and CCM have the same current but that the CS is using the most power (17.7 W) and the ECS is using the least (10.6 W).
  - Just to try one more thing, they turn everything off and then turn on only the PP and the CS. You find that, even though they have the same voltage, the current going through these elements are different.
 
The FTOE director wants to try to turn everything on at once as it is currently configured - the Mayor is getting desperate and you are running out of time to do something to control these storms. Will the current configuration of these elements in a circuit allow the hawkion accelerator to power up safely??

<WRAP info>
=== Learning Goals ===
  * Design/draw a circuit that meets given criteria 
  * Use resistor combination rules, loop rule, and node rule to determine the circuit set up.
  * Calculate the equivalent resistance of a circuit.
</WRAP>

==== Wrap Up Questions ====
  - Why could you reuse resistance numbers between the different steps? Why could you *not* reuse the current or voltage values?
  - What assumptions did you need to make in this problem?
  - Are there other solutions that could meet the criteria? Draw them out.
  - How would you evaluation your solution in this problem? (Look at the project rubric.)
  - How would you evaluate the model in this problem? (Look at the project rubric.)